Friday, July 15, 2011

Reading...

I’ve been talking books tonight with V, a conversation that is now spilling over into my blog.

At any given moment, I am likely to be part-way through at least half a dozen books. For example, right now I’m reading: The Sacrifice by Adele Wiseman, Selected Letters of Margaret Laurence and Adele Wiseman, Iris and the Friends by John Bayley, Connected Parenting by Jennifer Kolari and The No-Cry Potty Training Solution by Elizabeth Pantley.

I’m looking to add a French book to the mix, so tonight V is browsing the web and tossing out random suggestions at me.

We have three different bookshelves in our living room. The biggest one, which dominates one wall, is filled with a random selection of books from V’s and my combined libraries. This is an eclectic mix of poetry, Shakespeare, cognitive philosophy, travel books, pop-sci and sci-fi, among others. Another bookshelf, one which was given to me by my mother about 15 years ago and which has traveled with me across the country, is stocked with some of my classics (Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Conrad, Joyce...), philosophy and French lit.

The smallest, but the most cluttered bookshelf, is mostly filled with books both V and I have acquired and mean to get to at some point, but just haven’t quite got around to it yet. V keeps up a steady stream of books-on-hold from the public library and is usually racing to finish one before it’s due back – so he doesn’t have the time to read any of the books he actually owns. (The long-awaited A Dance with Dragons arrived Wednesday and V fell asleep a few pages in last night). I tend to read so many books at one time that to actually finish any one in particular takes much longer than it would if I just read it on its own.

Despite my acknowledgement that I read too many books at once, I’m actually looking for suggestions of good books from any readers out there – would be particularly interested in books in French and books by Canadian authors. I like rich narratives that focus more on the subtleties and complexities of relationships than on action and plot. Feedback welcome.

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